California-based private cellular provider Celona has staffed-up its nascent European operation with new senior-level joiners from Qualcomm in the US, notably, plus from UK-based tech consultancy and integrator Empowered Technology. Celona is seeking to sell its private LTE/5G system into operator channels in Europe, as an easy IT-geared cellular bundle for enterprises to integrate with their backend systems.
The company has also announced an updated version of its cloud-based private cellular orchestration platform, sold with its private network system, to give IT staff a way to provision, monitor, and analyze their private networks, and the users and devices on them. It said enterprises can now “automatically quantify critical performance aspects” of its infrastructure – “such as stability, access, service, and application quality”.
The new appointments are as follow: Sanjeet Pandit, formerly with Qualcomm and Ericsson, has joined as vice president of global operator relations; Paul Donovan and Graham Duthie, who jointly founded UK-based Empowered Technology, and who both also worked together previously at enterprise network security firm Pulse Secure, have joined as vice president and systems engineer, respectively, of the company’s EMEA operations.
A press note referenced differences with European regulation of private networks, compared with the CBRS system in the US where Celona has made its name, insofar as spectrum is available specifically for dedicated private cellular networks, and also that initiatives such as the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) and the EU 5G Action Plan actively encourage the development and deployment of private wireless networks across industries.
Rajeev Shah, co-founder and chief executive at Celona, has told these pages before that Celona is actively seeking (and engaging already with) operators to take its product to market. A statement said Celona is “actively recruiting and signing partners” in Germany, the UK, and “other European countries” – to support “explosive demand” for its 5G LAN system. It is looking to work with integrator partners, invariably; it already has a tie-up with NTT.
Shah said: “As one of the most developed and affluent regions in the world, Europe is playing a key role in the widespread rollout of 5G globally. We believe this market is primed for astonishing growth as organizations realize the value that private wireless brings in supercharging business operations across a myriad of vital business use cases.”
Donovan added: “Strong demand for private 5G in Europe is being driven by the surging requirements of enterprises to modernize their data, security, and digitalization to meet the growth and operational needs of their organizations. Global customers are looking for a consistent, unified and compelling 5G architecture that can be cost-effectively deployed across all their sites to address long-standing connectivity issues that can’t be solved using conventional enterprise wireless technologies.”
Meanwhile, the updated Celona orchestrator tool provides “rich analytics that enable IT staff to quickly pinpoint potential root causes for poor device experience while quantifying critical performance aspects of the network”, the company said. It added: “Enterprise IT staff aren’t data scientists. They want actionable data and correlated insights into the device experience. Direct access to the underlying data driving the network experience in a manner that is easy to consume is becoming a prerequisite for success. Until now this hasn’t been available within the private wireless market.”
